Shape The Future

Shaping the future requires you to know customer preferences, technology trends, and societal needs and where these preferences, trends, and needs are headed. I have always adhered to the Wayne Gretzky school of management, which teaches that you win not by skating to the puck, but by skating to where the puck is going to be.

Here are some examples of that management principle in action:

• At US West, we were first to achieve commercial deployment of high-speed broadband (DSL) to the home, the first to deliver live TV over copper wires, and the first to achieve commercial delivery of live TV integrated with the Internet, wireline, and wireless applications.
• I took on the job of CEO of Graviton, a high-technology start-up, because I was attracted by the idea of leveraging wireless technologies and developing a new industry that I call “sensornetics.” “Sensornetics” is about using small, aspirin-sized sensors on machines and infrastructure that are, in turn, linked to the Internet to expand our capacity to manage buildings, automobiles, bridges, compressors, and other elements of the engineered world. Sensornetics is important because it is dramatically increasing productivity in every sector including public health and safety.
• At Telstra we deployed NextG™ – the world’s largest, fastest, and most advanced high-speed mobile Internet which now delivers voice, video, and data at network speeds up to 42 Mbps to major cities with up to 21 Mbps available to 99 percent of the population.
• At Telstra we spoke out fearlessly on behalf of Telstra shareholders and the public interest to stimulate and lead a public debate on the need to embed high-speed broadband in every home and business to advance innovation in every sector through online channels.
• During our time at Telstra, Australia achieved world-leading increases in broadband penetration – from 16 percent in 2005 to 62 percent in 2009.